Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!!

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Joe Guy
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Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!!

Post by Joe Guy »

Woman says Southwest flight crew wouldn't let her call suicidal husband
Sunday, May 17, 2015 01:06PM

MILWAUKEE, WI --
A Wisconsin woman says she tried to call her husband moments before he apparently killed himself, but wasn't allowed to by a flight crew, reports television station WTMJ.

Karen Momsen-Evers was in New Orleans aboard a Southwest Airlines flight back home to Germantown, Wisconsin when she received a disturbing text from her husband, asking for forgiveness for what he was about to do.

"I started shaking the minute I got the text and I was panicked," she said. "I didn't know what to do."

Karen says she knew he was serious because he'd been under a lot of stress. She tried to quickly call him, but says a flight attendant wouldn't let her.

"The steward slapped the phone down and said, 'You need to go on airplane mode now,'" said Karen.

Karen was in tears as the plane took off, and as the flight reached cruising altitude, she says she tried again to have a flight attendant make an emergency call.

"I just wanted somebody to go and try to save him, and nobody helped," she said.

Karen sat in her seat for the rest of the flight crying and staring at the text her husband had sent. When the flight landed in Milwaukee, she called police, but it was too late. Her husband was dead.

Southwest Airlines offered a statement, saying their "hearts go out to the Evers family during this difficult time." They went on to say that flight attendants are trained to notify the captain if there's an emergency that poses a hazard to the plane or passengers on board.

In this case, they say the captain wasn't notified.

Karen says the outcome could have been changed.

"The pain of knowing that something could have been done," said Karen. "It breaks my heart."

Southwest Airlines offered Karen a full refund on the flight.
Oh... that's okay then. Very generous. Thanks....

source

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Scooter
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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by Scooter »

I was going to post this story a few days ago. There's no way of knowing whether local police could have gotten to her husband in time to stop him, but that is precisely the point. This woman was tortured for two hours by being forced to sit helplessly because of the desire of yet another airline lackey to play God, and she will be tormented for the rest of her life wondering whether she could have saved her husband if she had been given the chance.

The airline should pay HUGE for this one.
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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by MajGenl.Meade »

I thought phone calls were permitted after take-off?
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts

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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by rubato »

Scooter wrote:I was going to post this story a few days ago. There's no way of knowing whether local police could have gotten to her husband in time to stop him, but that is precisely the point. This woman was tortured for two hours by being forced to sit helplessly because of the desire of yet another airline lackey to play God, and she will be tormented for the rest of her life wondering whether she could have saved her husband if she had been given the chance.

The airline should pay HUGE for this one.
In a just world they shouldn't pay anything.

It is unreasonable to demand that airline operators have foreseen and put in place methods of accommodating any and all eventualities external to airline safety no matter how dramatic and compassion-inducing they are. The were other paths not taken by her as well.


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Last edited by rubato on Tue May 19, 2015 1:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by rubato »

MajGenl.Meade wrote:I thought phone calls were permitted after take-off?

I tried, out of curiosity, to see if I could get a cell signal during a flight and got nothing. But then there is the body of the plane blocking electronic signals as well as the vertical distance from a cell tower.


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Scooter
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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by Scooter »

Yes, your view seems to have been shared by many who commented on the various articles I read about this incident. I think that the circumstances in which an airline would be faced with a passenger dealing with an emergency life and death situation on the ground would be so rare that they could be dealt with without needing any elaborate protocols except a modicum of common sense.

If an airline pilot can contact air traffic control to find out the score of a sporting event in order to communicate same to the passengers, which anyone who flies has witnessed with some regularity, then he/she sure as hell would have had 15 seconds to give ATC this woman's address to have police attend to her home and see if anything could have been done to prevent a death.
"Hang on while I log in to the James Webb telescope to search the known universe for who the fuck asked you." -- James Fell

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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by rubato »

I'm sure that those asking for ball scores asked nicely. I can't say that I've ever seen that but then I'm mostly flying up and down the W. coast.


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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by Big RR »

I've heard sports scores broadcast by the pilot many times. It probably depends on the pilot, but I do agree with Scooter that the captain could have contacted the police through ground control for her if captains can also get football scores.

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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by BoSoxGal »

I read this story online a few days ago and was pretty upset by it, too.

I can't help thinking there must have been something in that conversation between the passenger and the attendant that isn't communicated in the story - I can't imagine how anybody could be so heartless otherwise. It seems like if she'd told the attendant why she needed to make the call, the attendant would have brought the situation to the pilot's attention so he could radio ATC to call 911 to the residence.

Maybe the passenger didn't share that information, but only told the attendant she had an emergency reason to call her husband - which I'm sure they've hear hundreds of times before from passengers just wanting to make calls?

Those details weren't clear in the story I read online . . . at DailyMail. :oops:


eta: Apparently I gave the attendants far too much credit, this from Huffington Post:

Moments before her flight from New Orleans to Milwaukee took off on April 3, Karen Momsen-Evers told Wisconsin's NBC affiliate TMJ4 she received a disturbing text from her husband, indicating he intended to commit suicide.

Momsen-Evers immediately texted her husband back "no," but when she attempted to call him, a flight attendant forced her to turn off her phone, citing Federal Aviation Administration regulations.

She complied, then asked a second attendant for assistance once the flight reached cruising altitude, only to be denied.

"I begged her, I said I'm sure someone can make an emergency phone call," Momsen-Evers recalled to the station.

"I showed her the texts. She said that there is nothing she could do and that they could not disturb the pilot," she added to Fox News. "I just wanted someone to go and try to save him."
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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by oldr_n_wsr »

She should have made a bigger scene before the plane took off. A big enough scene to get herself kicked off the plane.

We read of plenty of times people acting out and getting kicked off a plane or causing it to emergency land to get them off the plane.

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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by BoSoxGal »

Yes, but they can be charged with a felony/misdemeanor federal or state crime for such behavior, as well as be assessed a very heavy fine.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
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Joe Guy
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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by Joe Guy »

bigskygal wrote:Yes, but they can be charged with a felony/misdemeanor federal or state crime for such behavior, as well as be assessed a very heavy fine.
I doubt that the thought of being charged with a crime would have crossed my mind - but I agree with you that there had to be more to the conversation than is being reported.

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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by rubato »

Quite a coincidence that he texted when she was boarding the plane. If it was.

What are the odds?

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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by BoSoxGal »

Maybe she really didn't give a shit that he offed himself, but she's looking to play litigation lottery?


eta: Because all lawyers are scum and all plaintiffs are whiny gold-diggers, of course!
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by MajGenl.Meade »

Maybe he hung up
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts

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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by Gob »

Ohhhhh! Ouch!!! :D
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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by Lord Jim »

It is unreasonable to demand that airline operators have foreseen and put in place methods of accommodating any and all eventualities external to airline safety no matter how dramatic and compassion-inducing they are. The were other paths not taken by her as well.
I'm sure that those asking for ball scores asked nicely.
Quite a coincidence that he texted when she was boarding the plane. If it was.

What are the odds?
Excuse me, but weren't all those words I just quoted posted by someone who recently accused somebody else of not having compassion for other people?
ImageImageImage

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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by rubato »

bigskygal wrote:Maybe she really didn't give a shit that he offed himself, but she's looking to play litigation lottery?


eta: Because all lawyers are scum and all plaintiffs are whiny gold-diggers, of course!
No, I was suggesting that he might have timed it deliberately out of cruelty.


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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by rubato »

God, some people are slow.

this:
I'm sure that those asking for ball scores asked nicely.

Was meant to hint that requests for ball scores would have been made in a manner and in a different social context than that here. Further, the "evidence" of pilots doing so was selected only from such requests which were successful. For all anyone knows based on this anecdotal 'evidence' they refuse as often as not.


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Re: Rules are Rules! You can't Call your Suicidal Husband!!

Post by oldr_n_wsr »

bigskygal wrote:Yes, but they can be charged with a felony/misdemeanor federal or state crime for such behavior, as well as be assessed a very heavy fine.
Dead husband versus possible charges and him maybe not dead.

I know my choice and I think I could find an attorney that would get me out of the charges.

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